and blessing you."Ropars made the promise, amidst sighs and groans; but this was the dying woman's last effort. After having thanked him by an embrace, she let herself sink into her husband's arms. It almost seemed as though the power of her will had slackened the steps of Death, for the sake of this final compact. Scarcely was it completed, when her sufferings recommenced. Carried back to the alcove, she died there towards the close of the day. Her last words were a prayer, in which her husband's and her daughter's names were intermingled.On the ensuing day, the grave in which Josèphe already reposed was re-opened to receive Geneviève, for, during the past month, Death had reaped so abundantly that the barren island lacked space for his doleful harvest. Informed of what had happened, by means of the signals agreed upon, the keeper of the powder-magazine brought Francine to the edge of his rock, and the child, on her knees, uttered a prayer for her mother's spirit, at the moment the funeral ceremony was ended, across the water.This death was the last. Like those expiatory victims who, in sacrificing themselves, were wont to appease the anger of the Gods, Geneviève seemed, in going down to the tomb, as though she closed its doors behind her. A fortnight later, and the yellow flag slid down the flag staff that over-topped the lazaretto, and those who had been quarantined, now cured, went away in the frigate's long-boat. They only left behind them, on the dreary island, a man whose hair had become perfectly white, and a child in mourning clothes.
THRICE ONLY.
I Do not imagine that this is to be a love-story. Very few experiences furnish material for such. Rarer still is the ability to use the material, when it falls in one's way. At any rate, I make no pretension thereto.But it sometimes happens during the earlier and more tumultuous period of a man's life, that casual occurrences take place, which do not indeed at the time immediately influence his actions or his fortunes, but which in later days may be recalled with interest. Of this sort--if I mistake not, or if I do not mar them in the telling--were my three meetings with Mary Verner. I only met her thrice.The first time--many a year has sped away since; but it seems, if I shut my mental eye to events and feelings with which the interval has been crowded, and my bodily eye to the library table before me, as if the little scene were being enacted here, now, to-day.Whence this power of summoning up the ghosts of long ago? Why should the comparatively recent refuse to be stamped upon the memory, and the old impressions refuse to fade? Let philosophers answer; I have no more inclination to write an essay than to tell a love-tale. My
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